bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • One more reason why “Footprints” is not the same as the Gospels.

    Food for thought from Disputations:

    It’s kind of strange, isn’t it, how a familiar passage doesn’t become dull so much as silent. They don’t tell you what you already know; they simply don’t tell you anything at all. And of course there are passages that are silent from first reading on.

    And then… pop!

    This caught my eye because the process of coming to terms with "Footprints in the Sand" happened to me too.  For years I was somewhat ashamed of my thunderstruckness on my first reading, because after I discovered how ubiquitous it is on cheap "inspirational" plaques and samplers I started to regard it as treacle. 

    Which, of course, it is, compared to Scripture.   But then, so is a lot of stuff.

    Hat tip:  Emily at After Abortion.

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  • Smart kid, close call (UPDATED)

    This, in my local paper, is the sort of thing that makes my heart skip a beat:

    The two boys told police that they noticed a man watching them as they played at an apartment building playground in the 1000 block of Duluth Street. Shortly before 6:40 p.m., the man grabbed the younger boy by the arm and started to walk off to a wooded area, police said. The older boy, 9, yelled and threw rocks until the man let go.

    Last summer I had a suspicious impulse towards a man who approached my four-year-old son at a playground, and stared him down until he walked away.  (Short version:  Lone man walking dog, ten o’clock on a weekday morning, starts conversation with small boys playing in an isolated corner of the playground.) 

    I know this sort of thing is very rare, but not rare enough for me to let a boy this age play unsupervised in a public place.

    UPDATE:  OK, so it’s even rarer than that.  The boys have admitted to lying.

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  • Maggie hits it on the head.

    Fabulous essay by Maggie Gallagher in the NCR.  It’s in the form of a letter explaining love and marriage to her grown son Patrick.

    Here’s the place to begin. Every time you make love, you could be making your first-born child…

    The fate of your first child will lie in the hands of this woman to whom you give the perhaps unwelcome gift of your seed. Afterwards, our society gives you no say in what happens next: whether she kills your baby, or bears it away from you, or asks for your help raising it in a quasi-family, one where love, money, sexual attachments, and parenting are split up among multiple people and households.

    If you are lucky perhaps she will secretly long for you to propose marriage. But you lose control. What happens next will be up to her, not you.

    Your capacity to protect your own child will depend entirely on the woman to whom you have made love. You have placed your fatherhood in her hands.

    (My son, here’s a secret: Fatherhood is always the gift of a woman).

    Read it all.  Hat tip:  Sara Butler at familyscholars.org.

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  • Scientists Say

    Mark was leafing through last week’s issue of Science at the breakfast table.  "This is a weird magazine."

    I said, "It’s really a journal, even though it looks like a trade mag.  It’s fairly prestigious to be published in there." 

    "Yeah, it looks like one in the back."  He pushed it across the table and pointed to the Letters page (link requires paid subscription).  "Is it prestigious to get your retraction published?"

    The report "Defective transcription-couped repair of oxidative base damage in Cockayne syndrome patients from XP group G" (1) is retracted.  An ad hoc investigatory committee … has found that the last author (S. A. L.) of the paper "fabricated and falsified research findings"… The first three authors of the paper were not cognizant of any irregularities and were not involved in any wrongdoing.  The fourth author (S. A. L.) declined to sign this retraction.

    I don’t know how often papers are formally retracted because fake data is uncovered.  Retraction because mistakes are discovered is a normal part of the process, or at least it should be, because mistakes happen all the time.

    A year out of graduate school, I suspect fakery is very, very common, especially if you include the omission of data along with fabrication and falsification.  I suspect that it falls on a spectrum:  at one end, the deliberate creation of data that never existed, reports from experiments that were not done or that turned out quite differently; at the other end, decisions to omit certain data and report others that are rooted in unconscious bias.  Somewhere in there, too, obfuscation or exaggeration in the write-ups.

    A lot of people are suspicious of university research that is funded by corporations with a stake in the findings.  Supposedly this creates an incentive for the investigator to skew the data in favor of the funding corporation.  Maybe that’s true at the level of the primary investigator, i.e. the supervising professor. 

    In my experience, it’s not true for the graduate students who do most of the research, at least not in physical science and engineering.  What do they care who funds them as long as they get their stipend? 

    No, with graduate students the incentive is all about time.  I’ve been here seven years and I don’t have anything to show for it.  If this keeps up they’ll kick me out.  As soon as I finish this up and get something—anything—that will look good to the thesis committee, I’ll be making real money. 

    Or maybe it goes like this:  Everyone else in my group finishes within five years.  I’m starting to look bad.  My advisor is pressuring me to finish.

    My own thesis was theoretical; the "data" came from one computer program I wrote myself, and later from another computer program that a visiting professor, who is much better at programming than I am, wrote after I set up the equations.  (Yes, I properly attributed the work to the professor.)  Mine has nothing but my own reasoning to stand on.  That’s one thing I like about theoretical investigation.

    UPDATE:  Here’s a link to a news article on the retraction.  Sounds like the alleged faker has issues that go beyond research.

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  • In other news: Pope Catholic

    What were they thinking he would say?

    ROME, Italy (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI indicated Saturday he will stick to Pope John Paul II’s unwavering stands against abortion and euthanasia, saying pontiffs must resist attempts to "water down" Roman Catholic teaching.

    Also:  These are not "Pope John Paul II’s… stands." Such a phrase assumes that the popes are only politicians, and their comments about abortion and euthanasia are only party lines of one kind or another.  These are teachings that have been continuously upheld since the time of the apostles.  It’s not like JPII came up with them on his own. 

    But it fits with the MSM meme:  church as political party.

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  • Michelangelo

    From the L. A. Times:

    Throughout the two-day conclave, Mahony said, he and other cardinals were moved by the fact that they were participating in a historic event in the dramatic setting of the Sistine Chapel, adorned with paintings of damnation and salvation by Michelangelo, including the "Last Judgment."

    "I kept looking up at all the paintings, at Michelangelo’s works, and thought, the only thing that stayed the same in this room is everything that Michelangelo painted here."

    He said that as he and others studied the artworks, it occurred to them that the message of the paintings was timeless and as relevant in the 21st century as they were when they were made in the 16th century.

    I like the idea that Michelangelo is the messenger chosen from among all the people of God to remind the cardinals why they are there; what it means to Feed my sheep. 

    This is what we need, says Michelangelo.  Let me show you what the stakes are.

    He is the ordinary person’s representative in the conclave.

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  • OY

    Ah, the Associated Press:

    For some Israelis, the new pope’s condemnation of abortion, same-sex marriage and his embrace of other conservative stands has raised concerns of closed-mindedness — an attitude they fear may be connected to residual anti-Semitism.

    Does anybody actually read this stuff anymore?  Since when is one’s opinion of the meaning of marriage "connected to residual anti-Semitism?" 

    I wonder how ordinary Germans, seventy and older, are reacting to this  "socially conservative German = Nazi" fantasy.

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  • Terri and the Law

    I want to clarify my posts on Terri somewhat.

    Do I think it’s wrong to starve her to death?  Absolutely.  And I have no doubt that’s actually what’s going on:  she is being deliberately killed, and the instrument of her murder is the intentional withholding of food and water for no other purpose than to bring about her death.

    It’s wrong.  Absolutely wrong.

    Is it legal?

    Yes.  It’s legal.

    Unjust laws must be opposed; indeed we have both the right and the duty to oppose them. 

    Speech is the most important tool of opposition. 

    Civil disobedience is another well-worn tool, and Americans are rightly proud of its history in our country.  That’s why I admire the protesters who are  deliberately getting themselves arrested for the crime of carrying cups of water across police lines; yes, even the ones who are getting their children involved (assuming the children understand what they are getting into).  If it is good to bring children to any political protest at all—and I’ve seen them at many—it is certainly good to bring them to this one. 

    The most formal measure: lawsuits brought by individuals challenging the application of law in a particular case.  That’s what the courts are for.  And that’s why I don’t fault the Schindler family for grasping at the wispiest of legal straws in their effort to save their daughter. 

    But even though unjust laws must be opposed, at the same time it’s an understandable and defensible position for someone charged with carrying out the law to say "I wish I could do more, but I have to follow that law."  So I can’t fault Jeb Bush either here, at least not at this stage in the game.  (Do I think he should order an autopsy if Terri dies?  Heck yes.)

    The rules of the game have already been laid down.  The moral battle for Terri’s life was lost when Florida included tube-delivered food and water in the list of "medical treatments" that a guardian may withdraw from a ward without prior authorization.  I doubt that most of the legislators intended direct euthanasia when they wrote the law, but the law certainly wasn’t written carefully enough to exclude it.  Terri’s might be the death that prompts legislators in Florida and other states to prevent future euthanizations-by-starvation by repealing that and similar provisions.  Or not; even though I think it’s obvious that a ventilator is a medical treatment and a feeding tube is basic nursing care, no more artificial than a baby’s bottle, perhaps the general public will never be persuaded to see it like this.  Perhaps the general public really does want to be given the choice to be euthanized, or rather, the possibility of being euthanized without being given a choice.

    (I can still try to persuade them.  Should a guardian be able to order that her diapers remain unchanged, so that she lies in her own menstrual blood, excrement and urine?  Should he be able to order that no one turn her, so that her bedsores fester to the bone?  Should he be able to order that no one clean her teeth, or brush her hair, or trim her fingernails?  If not any of these things, then how, how, how can it be acceptable to order that no one feed her or give her water?)

    The other part of the rules of the game, of course, is the guardianship.  I’m glad that a presumptive guardian exists.  I’m even glad that it’s the husband, and not the parents; goodness, I hope no one, especially my "just shoot me in the head" dad, ever wrenches custody of me away from my spouse should I become disabled.  But custody can be lost, of course.  Even parents can quickly lose custody of their children, sometimes with little or no due process:  all it takes is for a court to find it in the "best interests" of the children.  A court.  And that’s the way the law is written.  Huge power to decide custody battles rests in the hands of judges and judges alone, on a case-by-case basis.

    And that’s what happened here.  And that’s why Michael Schiavo is caring for Terri Schiavo:  a judge had to believe it was in Terri’s best interest, and that it continued to be in Terri’s best interest.  Ultimately, that it is more in her interest to be starved to death than to be fed and cared for.

    What’s the guardianship law in your state?

    What’s the living-will law in your state?

    If there’s a problem with either, now—when everyone has Terri on their minds—is the time to change it.

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  • Christus resurrexit hodie.

    This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.

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  • This isn’t a rare case.

    Something that most Catholic bloggers haven’t emphasized:

    Terri Schiavo isn’t really a "rare" case. Stronger people pull feeding tubes out of weaker people all the time. And a lot of those times the sick person didn’t have their wishes in writing and nobody really knows what they would have wanted. And some of those times family members disagree about what to do.

    Terri is perhaps special because there are so many arguments for keeping the tube in, many of which rest on what I’ll call "common decency" rather than specifically Catholic doctrine. (1) her wishes aren’t known (2) her guardian appears to have several ulterior motives (3) the courts may not have given her a fair shake (4) it is debatable whether she is in a PVS or whether she is conscious and able to suffer from her starvation (5) someone is willing and able to shoulder all the burdens of her care.

    But let’s not forget that even if no one were willing to shoulder the burdens of her care, it would be wrong to starve her. Even if she were certainly in a PVS, it would be wrong to starve her. Even if the courts had given her a fair shake, it would be wrong (though legal) to starve her. Even if Michael Schiavo’s reputation were impeccable, it would be wrong to starve her (though if he thought otherwise through no fault of his own, his guilt might be mitigated).

    And does this happen? Yes. And are we outraged? No. Maybe because that battle has already been fought and lost, when "nutrition and hydration" were included in the list of "medical treatments" that can be denied to the dying.

    The "easiest case" for most people may be the hardest case for us: when a patient has explicitly directed her own starvation in an advance care directive. It is clearly wrong, in the first place, to direct your guardian to starve you. But once a believer becomes the guardian of someone who explicitly has directed him to starve her, what should he do? Abandon guardianship? Disobey the order? Or wash his hands of it and carry out her wish?

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  • For Christians who side with Michael Schiavo: Matthew 25:31-46

    "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne,


    and all the nations will be assembled before him.  And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

    He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

    Then the king will say to those on his right,

    ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father.  Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

    For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’

    Then the righteous will answer him and say,

    ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?’
    When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’

    And the king will say to them in reply,

    ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’

    Then he will say to those on his left,

    ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
    For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
    a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’

    Then they will answer and say,

    ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’

    He will answer them,

    ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’

    And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

    Hello?  Hello?

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  • Palm Sunday 2005

    Palm Sunday Mass was amazing.  I am so happy at our new parish.

    The processional song was All Glory, Laud and Honor (link plays music). I’d never heard it before.

    This is the first procession I’ve ever seen that didn’t try to make everyone in the church cram into the lobby and then process awkwardly in.  Instead the procession came in from the back and wound around and around the sanctuary.  I was free to stand in the pew, sing joyfully, and drink the whole thing in.  For the first time in my life, I felt I was watching the kind of Hosannas that greeted the Lord.

    The procession included about a dozen Knights of Columbus in full regalia, including swords, delighting my four-year-old son. About thirty children followed, waving double fistfuls of palms. And I mean waving:  not a gentle, dignified swaying, as I’ve always imagined, but rattling them excitedly like long rustly pompoms.  Of course!  And of course, that’s what it would have been.  I never understood what was so special about being honored with palm branches.  But they are streamers, they are ready-made flags to wave, to rattle excitedly, while you jump up and down and hope you’ll be noticed, if the hero turns his head your way when he passes by. 

    Youths carried banners bearing images of the crown of thorns, the lance, and other symbols of the Passion. All processed around and around the sanctuary, up and down the aisles, singing.

    I couldn’t sing. I wept. It was just so dear and real to me.

    The reading of the Passion was another new experience.  This time it was chanted. The narrator sang a warm baritone. Pilate’s, the crowds’, the soldiers’ voices were sung by a powerful but reedy tenor. Our priest chanted the words of Jesus.

    I thought of how singular it is that Palm Sunday Mass contains both Hosanna and Crucify him, how close together they are, how quickly popular sentiment can change.  St Faustina writes in her Diary:

    March 21, 1937.  Palm Sunday.  During Mass, my soul was steeped in the bitterness and suffering of Jesus.  Jesus gave me to understand how much he had suffered in that triumphal procession.  "Hosanna" was reverberating in Jesus’ heart as an echo of "Crucify." 

    What reverberates in our hearts?

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